We Have No Way Of Knowing If Free Wifi Users Are Surfing Porn: RailTel

"Completely false."

Passengers use smartphones while charging the devices at Mumbai Central railway station in Mumbai.

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Earlier today, a report said that most users of free Wi-Fi at the Patna railway station use it to visit porn sites. A RailTel spokesperson has now denied it, calling the story 'completely false.'

The report had noted, that Patna, which recently got free Wi-Fi at its railway station, tops the chart when it comes to data usage. "More than anything, porn sites have been watched and downloaded by the people at Patna railway station," a railway official was quoted by IANS as saying.

However, a RailTel spokesperson said that there's no way to know what sites users browse.

"This is to clarify that no RailTel official has spoken to IANS reporter for this story and the quotes as mentioned in the story are completely false," the spokesperson told HuffPost India.

"The Wi-Fi provided at stations is the platform to millions of users to connect to internet and RailTel, being an Internet Service Provider, do not keep watch over the websites being browsed by the users. The guidelines being issued by DoT in this regard from time to time are being strictly complied with by RailTel," the spokesperson said.

Last year, Internet major Google and state-run RailTel Corp. of India joined hands to equip 400 railways station in the country with high speed Wi-Fi networks, making it one of the largest public Wi-Fi projects in the world.

Earlier this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that people used 15 times more data on Wi-Fi networks which have been set up at railway stations compared to what they use in a full-day on their phones.

Since hooking up the the first station, Mumbai Central, to the internet in January 2016, Google has connected 23 stations including Pune, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Patna, Ernakulam Junction and Vishakhapatnam Central.